


Still Lies the Midnight

by OllieoftheBeholder



Series: Whumptober 2020 [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Panic Attacks, Part of a longer fic, Time Travel Fix-It, Whumptober 2020, attack on the Institute, pre-relationship jonmartin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27090994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OllieoftheBeholder/pseuds/OllieoftheBeholder
Summary: Jon turns a corner and slams on his brakes. There is a veritable wall of emergency lights before him—police, fire, even an ambulance. And it all seems to be centered around...No.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1962028
Comments: 10
Kudos: 81
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Still Lies the Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a longer fic that I am working on, but this portion in particular was suited for Whumptober, so I'm sharing it now. You don't need to know the rest of the fic, really, to follow along with this, but basically: Time Travel Fix-It fic in which Jon _and_ Martin travel back to Season 1, after Martin begins living in the Archives but before Jane Prentiss attacks the Institute. Things change, as things are wont to do. This scene is the _new_ attack on the Institute.

Jon grumbles to himself as he drives back through the streets of London. Stupid. Stupid of him to have left his notes behind and stupid to be going back for them now. He could easily wait until morning. There’s no real urgency in the matter. What can he possibly do in the next—he glances at the dashboard clock on his car—nine hours that can’t wait until business hours?

But after realizing he left them in his office, he was out the door and in his car before he thought about it. Even now, he can’t convince himself to just turn around and go back. There is an odd sense of urgency propelling him. He needs to get to the Archives, needs to get those notes. And, all right, maybe he’ll check on Martin while he’s at it.

Really, he might as well stay overnight himself. No point in driving back and forth more than necessary. He can get whatever work he wants done just as easily in the office, and it might be useful to have another pair of hands or eyes or ears or whatever he needs, even if—

Jon terminates that line of thought ruthlessly. Martin _isn’t_ incompetent. He just doesn’t have the training the rest of them do. If Jon thinks about it too hard, he actually feels a bit of a heel for having been so harsh on the man without troubling to ask questions. He did what he could with what he had, and now that he’s come out and admitted it, Sasha has been more than willing to help him out. He is getting better. A lot better. And it’s only been a couple of days.

So...yes. If he stays at the office to work, Martin can help. And probably will, if he’s still awake. It is, after all, a bit late. Jon will have to be quiet, at least at first, because if Martin is asleep he doesn’t want to wake him. He needs rest. They all do, really, but Jon is an anxious mess at the best of times and this whole...situation isn’t helping, so his sleep is ofttimes restless at best and intermittent at worst. He’ll likely end up pacing the Archives for most of the night. Maybe he’ll check to make sure that CO2 system he talked Elias into having installed is working properly. Or maybe he’ll go through the statements. Martin found one that seemed to be from Jane Prentiss; Jon meant to read it the night before, but hadn’t got around to it. Yes, that will likely be what he does.

He turns a corner and slams on his brakes. There is a veritable wall of emergency lights before him—police, fire, even an ambulance. And it all seems to be centered around...

_No._

Jon isn’t one hundred percent certain the car is even all the way off, let alone pulled over to the curb, before he’s out the door and moving towards the crowd. Something is happening, and it’s happening at the Magnus Institute.

Jon scans the people clustered on the sidewalk. There aren’t many, not that he expected there to be. It is, after all, well into the evening. Most people left at five, or close to it. In fact, most of the people on the sidewalk seem to be from nearby buildings, mere curious onlookers gawking at the spectacle. Jon doesn’t see anyone he recognizes, and he slowly begins to relax.

Then panic strikes him like an almost physical force. _Martin._ Martin should be easy to spot. He’s big—not fat, exactly, just big—and one of the taller employees. He ought to be standing on the edge of the crowd, a bundle of anxiety and attempted helpfulness, talking to a police officer or an onlooker or looking around to make sure he isn’t going to get in trouble for something that almost certainly isn’t his fault.

He’s not there. Jon spins frantically, but Martin is nowhere to be seen. He could be on the far side of the crowd, or he could have stepped out for something, or—

Or he could still be in the Archives.

Jon runs towards the door, hardly aware he’s doing it. Something slams into him, holding him back, and he struggles, his panic rising. Something is _holding_ him, he’s trapped, he’s in danger, but _Martin is still in there—_

“Hold on, sir, you can’t go in there!”

“No, you don’t understand, I have to—my _friend_ is in there—” Jon fights to get free.

“Crews are inside, sir, they’ll find anyone who’s in there, but you need to stay out here. We can’t have you running into danger.”

The fireman—as it proves to be—deposits Jon behind a barricade. He grips it in both hands, staring desperately at the door to the Archives. There doesn’t seem to be any smoke pouring out of the door, which is...maybe promising, but maybe not. Maybe still too late.

There was a fire in the Archives, somehow. Martin was down there. If he didn’t wake in time...or if he wasn’t able to get out, if the CO2 suppressant system triggered and he breathed in too much of the stuff...

A chasm seems to open up before Jon as he suddenly, unexpectedly faces down the idea of a world devoid of Martin Blackwood. His mind conjures up thoughts of Martin’s not-too-chipper _morning, Jon_ every day, of his quiet determination to do his job even when he doesn’t really know what he’s doing, of the earnest way he makes his reports. Of him appearing in Jon’s office with a cup of tea, made exactly the way Jon likes it, at the exact moment he needs it the most.

In that moment, Jon understands with crystal clarity exactly how important Martin is to him, and how much it will devastate him if he is gone. His grip on the barricade tightens and he begins to wonder if he can escape the notice of the firefighters in order to—

“Jon?”

Only one person—one _living_ person, anyway—ever addresses Jon in that slightly disapproving tone. Jon turns to find Elias standing a few feet away, one eyebrow raised and his mouth set in a flat line. “Elias. What—what’s going on?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” Elias’s disapproval is almost palpable. “I don’t see the others. Never would have expected you to run and leave them behind.”

“Leave—what do you mean?”

Elias’s lips tighten. “You think I wasn’t aware of what was going on? I _did_ hear Tim talking about this ‘sleepover in the Archives’.”

Jon stares at Elias for a second, comprehension eluding him. Then, suddenly, ice floods his veins as he realizes what Elias is implying.

Not just Martin. Tim and Sasha doubled back to spend the night, too.

“Oh, God,” he manages to choke out.

Elias’s expression shifts. “You weren’t aware?”

“No!” Jon turns desperately back towards the Institute, towards the Archives, frantically scanning for any sign of...anything. “No, I thought—they both should have gone home by now, I—oh, _God._ No.”

He starts to dodge around the barricade, but Elias has his shoulder in an iron grip. “Steady, Jon. The ECDC said not to—”

“The what?” Jon jerks his head around to face Elias. Realization hits him, yet again, and while he would have sworn there isn’t enough blood left in his face for it to drain any further, he is apparently wrong about that. “ _Jane Prentiss_ is here?”

“Jon, you’re getting hysterical. Calm down.”

“ _Calm down?_ You’ve just informed me that my entire staff was in the Archives, which apparently were not only _on fire_ but invaded by a woman completely riddled with dangerous worms, and you want me to _calm down?_ ”

“The fire was apparently small, and, I suspect, set mostly with the intention of triggering the CO2 suppressant system—”

“If that is supposed to make me feel better, Elias, it is failing.” Jon turns back to the Archives and contemplates making a break for it. It’s fifty-fifty whether Elias will stop him, or just wait to see if he survives and then fire him, but the emergency staff are—

There’s a lot of activity around one of the doors. Jon lets out a ragged gasp as two EMTs come out, wheeling a stretcher between them with a body on it. He doesn’t— _can’t—_ know for sure who is on it, not from that distance, not in the dark and with his eyesight, but he does. He knows, with a certainty that he can almost taste, that it’s Martin on that stretcher.

And he isn’t moving.

“ _Jon!_ ” Elias shouts, but Jon is past hearing him, too preoccupied with rushing across the lawn. He has to get to him, has to see—

“Stand back!” A figure in a hazmat suit suddenly looms up, barring his progress. “You can’t come in this area!”

“Damn you, that is someone I _care_ about, I need to know he’s okay!” Jon cries, his voice cracking.

“I’m sorry, sir, but this area is in quarantine until we’re sure we’ve contained the infestation,” the figure in the hazmat suit says. “They’re taking him to the hospital. You should be able to see him once he’s out of quarantine.”

“But—” Jon’s eyes desperately track the stretcher as they wheel it past, the two EMTs tossing terms and orders back and forth. It _is_ Martin, he was right, lying very still. There’s an oxygen mask clamped over his face, and he’s—oh, God, he’s covered in _blood—_ he was attacked—the worms, or Jane Prentiss, or both, they attacked Martin, he is _hurt_ , he might be dying, he could already be dead and the oxygen mask could just be for form’s sake and nobody will _tell_ him because they have to control the damage and cover up what’s happening and Jon can’t even be at his side because he might still be infested with the parasites that riddled Prentiss’s body and oh, God, what will he do if Martin survives only to be like _that,_ this is all his fault, why in the name of God’s green earth did he think the Archives would be safe, why was it only Martin he suggested stay, why hadn’t he either had all of them stay, or had all of them stay somewhere else—

The slam of the ambulance doors jolts him out of his thoughts, and he draws in a great gasp of air, which he realizes he’s been forgetting to do somewhat. It would start calming him if not for the fact that he suddenly realizes where his thoughts are trending and starts panicking all over again. “Tim and Sasha! Where are they?”

The figure hesitates, then waves at someone. Another hazmat-suited figure comes over to them, and Jon can see the scowl behind the clear plastic mask, even over the breathing apparatus. “Get back behind the barricades! This area is under quarantine, and unless you want to be quarantined too, I suggest you stay clear.”

It crosses Jon’s mind, for a fleeting second, to ask if he’d be quarantined with Martin, but the thought is gone before he can speak it, fortunately. The figure that still holds him is already speaking, though. “Mack, how many people have we found so far?”

“Two, the man they just brought out and...well, what’s left of a woman,” the second figure says. “I’m told everyone should have been gone for the day.”

“My assistants decided to spend the night,” Jon says. He can hear the hysterical quality in his own voice but is helpless to stop it. “There should be two more, a man and a woman—he’s got, ah—and she’s—” He flounders as he tries desperately to conjure up a description of either Tim or Sasha. The only face his brain seems willing to contemplate just then is Martin’s, bright and eager, pale and scared, still and bleeding.

“We haven’t found them, sir, but we’ll keep looking.” The second figure’s tone changes—concern, maybe? Still, he waves at the first figure, who shoves Jon easily back behind the barricade.

Someone, probably Elias, is talking. Jon honestly isn’t listening. He’s torn between proceeding immediately to the hospital to stalk the lobby until someone lets him see Martin or staying here to make sure Tim and Sasha are all right. He _should_ probably be concerned about the Archives, about what caught on fire, on whether or not any important statements got burnt and how big the fire was, and he’s not going to lie, a part of him is. But he’s willing to let that concern lie until later. Right now, he just needs everyone to be okay.

“ _Jon,_ ” Elias says loudly, directly in his ear, and Jon about jumps out of his skin. He turns to see his boss looking at him with something that might be concern and might just be annoyance. “The worms are dead. ECDC is about to go in and remove Jane Prentiss’s body. I’m going in to supervise. Do you want to come?”

He really doesn’t. Quite apart from the fact that he’s been sufficiently upset by the few worms he _has_ seen around the Institute and really doesn’t want to see how many are still in the Archives, even dead, he’s just about decided that he needs to be at the hospital. Martin doesn’t have anybody, as far as Jon knows, and anyway he needs to see for himself that Martin is all right. But he also knows that this is part of his job, and a part of him _does_ need to see the Archives for himself as well, before...before whatever cleanup will happen.

Besides. Tim and Sasha are still down there.

“All right,” he manages. “Lead the way.”

He’s tense and distracted. Far from the mad rush that drove him a few moments before, he follows Elias at a more sedate pace, and he’s only half-aware of the fact that he’s balling the cuffs of his cardigan into his hand. Damn it, he bought this one brand-new when he got appointed Head Archivist and he’s already worried snags and stresses into the cuffs. He can’t help it, he’s got a compulsion to fiddle with the ends of his sleeves when he’s nervous or distracted—among other things—and this is hardly the first sweater he’s ruined like this, but it’s still been less than eight months and he’d sort of hoped he would be over this by now. He forces himself to uncurl his fists and shake his sleeves back into some semblance of order before entering the Archives.

They instantly go back into his curled fists when he sees the state of the Archives. There are worms _everywhere._ He cannot, for the life of him, figure out where they all came from. They’ve seen a few scattered around outside the Institute, one or two making their way inside, but this many? God, they must have been breeding in the damn _walls..._

The thought sends another sticky spiral of panic and guilt through him. If the worms were breeding in the walls of the Institute—of the Archives—and Martin’s been sleeping here this whole time—then this is entirely Jon’s fault. This could have happened at any time and he never would have known. He doesn’t doubt for a minute that Martin was awake when all this happened, but if Tim and Sasha hadn’t been there, he might have been asleep when the worms attacked.

He might not ever have woken up.

Jon looks desperately around, trying to keep his mind on the present and not on hypotheticals. There are files that have been pulled out and...are probably ruined, to be quite honest, as there’s some sort of...substance on them. There’s a great deal of activity surrounding what appears to have once been the body of a woman, in what appears to have once been a red dress, and Jon’s stomach turns uncomfortably as he thinks about Timothy Hodges’ statement...and Martin’s. The remnants of suppressant foam still linger, and while the gas seems to have mostly dissipated, the smell is...unpleasant. The smell of worms, and earth, and rot.

Then Jon’s eyes fall on a blank space, a curved-out negative in the sea of silver-white, and his heart lurches as he realizes he’s staring at the spot where Martin lay before the attendants took him out. He steps closer, not even consciously aware he’s doing it, and stares at the space, a perversion of a snow angel on the Archives floor. There’s blood on the wood, still tacky, and Jon wonders how much there is, whether it’s too much for a normal human to survive.

“Were you here when they...?” Jon addresses the nearest person, indicating the spot where Martin’s body obviously was retrieved from.

“Was the one who found him,” the figure confirms. It sounds like a woman. “Not a reporter, are you?”

“No, I’m—I-I work here.” Jon should probably point out that he is, in fact, _in charge_ here, or at least in this portion of “here”, in theory anyway, but he’s too preoccupied with finding out everything he can. “How was—what was the situation when you found him?”

“A bloody mess.” The woman waves a hand at the area. “Worms were all dead, thankfully, but there was still a bit of gas in the place. We knew we were looking for Jane Prentiss—Mr. Bouchard called us in as soon as he knew what was what—but we didn’t know there was anyone else here. I almost stepped on him before I saw him. Thought he was another dead body at first.”

Jon’s heart nearly stops in his chest. “But then?”

“He moved. Thought it might’ve been the worms at first. They were all through him. Looked like bloody Swiss cheese. But they were all as dead as the ones out here. No, it was him, struggling to breathe. I started pulling the worms out best I could and shouted for help. The paramedics showed up and helped out. He was starting to come round at that point, but...well. People aren’t meant to breathe carbon dioxide. They gave him oxygen and wheeled him out. He’ll need to be quarantined a bit until they’re sure he’s not infested, and they’ll be checking his lungs, but really, I think he’ll be fine.”

Jon exhales heavily. He really shouldn’t be relieved. Honestly, one look around the Archives should be enough to convince him that things are...bad. They _are_ bad. God, so many worms, and some of them were _in_ Martin’s body. There is also a human corpse on the floor. And there’s still no sign of Tim or Sasha. But those five words give him more of a sense of relief than he’s felt since he saw the first emergency light. _I think he’ll be fine._ Martin will be fine.

It’s enough to relax Jon to the point that he can wade carefully through the worm corpses to check the damage to his Archives, while Elias supervises the ECDC people in preparing to remove Jane Prentiss’s body, or what’s left of it anyway. Not far from where Martin lost consciousness— _not died, thank God—_ is another odd clearing—not so much a clearing as a slight thinning in the concentration of worms. Jon eyes it, decides it’s a concern for later, and concentrates on trying to figure out where the hell the worms came from in the first place.

He finds the answer when he wanders into his office and finds the cheap shelving unit shoved to one side, twisted and askew, and a hole in the wall behind it. It should have been an exterior wall, but no, it looks like someone put a piece of drywall over an entrance. Curious, Jon touches the hole lightly. It’s person-sized, as though someone burst through the wall. At first, he’s inclined to assume it was made by Jane Prentiss, forcing her way into the Archives, but a second glance proves otherwise. The break in the plaster indicates that it came _from_ his office, not _into,_ meaning that someone was in his office and, somehow, knew this tunnel was there.

That should be worrying. It _is_ worrying. Jon wonders who did it...who would break into his office, let alone push through this wall...who would put Martin in danger, because almost certainly this is how the worms got in and attacked him. He’d suspect Tim or Sasha or both, since they’re clearly not here, but he knows in his heart of hearts neither of them would deliberately put Martin at risk. They’re a family, the four of them, even if Jon’s been trying not to admit that, and they both care about him. They wouldn’t do anything to hurt him.

But if they didn’t know...

There’s a commotion from behind him, and Jon jumps. The thought passes through his mind that Jane Prentiss might not be all that dead after all, or worse—that she’s not alone, that she brought another of her victims along with her. He grabs at the first object he sees that could reasonably be considered a weapon—a paper knife he found in one of the drawers when he first took the job—and steps out into the Archives proper, not at all confident that he can do anything but at least willing to make the attempt.

He drops the knife instantly when he sees the two figures in the middle of the Archives, both looking panicky and quite out of breath. “Tim! Sasha!”

He rushes towards them, heedless of the worms popping and squishing under his feet. Tim looks up at him and waves at something on the floor—a hole. Jon realizes all of a sudden that they’re standing next to an open trapdoor in the middle of the Archives, something he had no idea existed before this moment.

“Call...police,” he manages to gasp out between heaving breaths.

“They’re outside,” Elias says, sounding somehow both worried and annoyed. “Tim, what is going on? What is the urgency?”

Sasha meets Jon’s eyes, and he’s genuinely never seen her so scared. “There’s a body in those tunnels. It’s Gertrude Robinson and she’s dead.”


End file.
